Introduction: Depression is one of the most common mental disorder and most often, the symptoms begin to emerge in adolescence and early youth. Students are in this age range. Since development of depression is associated with dramatic decrease in social, occupational, and educational functioning in the youth, the current study was aimed to evaluate the prevalence of depression and its effective demographic variables among the medical students of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences in 2014.
Methods: This descriptive, analytical, cross-sectional study was performed on 222 medical students of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences who were selected through convenience sampling in 2014. The questionnaires of demographic information and Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) were used for data gathering. Student’s t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used for data analysis by using SPSS software version 22.
Results: The results showed that 101 (45%) of the students were normal and 121 (55%) suffering from various degrees of depression, including 55 (24%) with mild depression, 56 (25.2%) with moderate depression, 7 (3.2%) with severe depression and 3 (1.4%) very severe depression. There was no significant relationship between sex, marriage, native/non-native, habitat and depression. Also, one-way analysis of variance indicated no significant relationship between grade and depression (P=0.268).
Conclusion: The results showed that at least half of the subjects had some degrees of depression. Therefore, it is proposed that the programs are required to promote mental health of the students to reduce the psychological problems such as depression.